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albuquerque
Advocates Demand Justice for Boy, 15, Killed During Albuquerque Police Attack
"They do not care for our lives," said one demonstrator protesting the killing of Brett Rosenau. "They use war weapons in our communities that created a fire that burned a child alive."
Jul 11, 2022
Civil rights advocates on Monday demanded justice after a 15-year-old boy was killed by a fire during a police attack on a home in New Mexico's largest city.
"This is a systemic statewide problem mostly affecting people of color who are disproportionately victims of police violence."
Brett Rosenau--whose father was shot dead by police before he was born--died after Albuquerque Police Department (APD) officers threw tear gas grenades into a home in Southeast Albuquerque during a Wednesday standoff in which the teen was a bystander.
"Any time a police encounter leads to the death of a person in our community, we must demand a full and unbiased accounting of how it happened," Barron Jones, senior policy strategist at the ACLU of New Mexico, said in a statement. "It is especially heartbreaking when our community loses a child in an interaction with local police."
"This latest incident is another tragic example of an extremely deadly year for the Albuquerque Police Department," he continued. "New Mexico regularly ranks first or second nationwide in the rate of people killed by police. This is a systemic statewide problem mostly affecting people of color who are disproportionately victims of police violence."
"The loss of yet another young, and by all accounts, innocent Black boy during a police encounter is a story all too familiar and should trigger scrutiny from the highest level." Jones added. "Rosenau's loved ones deserve answers and our community must be assured that proper accountability will be applied to fatal police encounters like this one."
\u201cA Black 15-year-old was killed in Albuquerque during a SWAT raid targeting someone else.\n\nBrett Rosenau died from smoke inhalation in a fire, police claim.\n\nPolice shot a noise flash device, which have been known to ignite, into the home but did not state the cause of the fire.\u201d— AJ+ (@AJ+) 1657562616
According to the Albuquerque Journal, officers with APD's Investigative Services Unit were attempting to serve felony warrants to 27-year-old Qiaunt Kelley at a house in the 8100 block of San Joaquin SE on Wednesday evening when Rosenau followed Kelley into the residence.
As the standoff drew on for hours, a SWAT team was called in, and in the early morning hours of Thursday, officers attacked the home with an unknown number of Flameless Tri-Chamber tear gas canisters and rounds of powder-based chemicals in a bid to force Kelley outside.
"They started throwing gas bombs in there," Elizabeth Fields, whose sister owns the house, told the Journal. "The whole house went up in flames."
According to the Journal, more than an hour passed between the time police used tear gas and when smoke began billowing from the house. Suffering from burn injuries as flames engulfed the home, Kelley eventually came outside. Rosenau and one of two dogs in the house never made it out alive.
APD spokesperson Gilbert Gallegos said Sunday that "the preliminary results of an autopsy cited the cause of death as smoke inhalation," while APD Chief Harold Medina said earlier that "we're working to determine" if a tear gas grenade "caused the fire."
Speaking of APD officers, Fields remarked: "They said, 'Well, we were trying to negotiate.' It's 2022! These are Black men that fear the police. You really thought you were going get them to come out the house?"
One of the home's residents, Deja, toldSource NM, "I don't have nowhere to go now, and I don't know where my son is going to live. I don't know where my mom is going to live."
\u201cAlbuquerque\u2019s PD SWAT team burned down a house and then a few hours later they murdered a 15 year old Black male named Brett Rosenau https://t.co/vK3lZ5Wcmh\u201d— Cop Crisis (@Cop Crisis) 1657436788
Medina acknowledged that tear gas canisters have a history of sparking fires and said that if an investigation proves APD actions caused Rosenau's death, "we will take steps to ensure this never happens again."
Rosenau's killing sparked protests in Albuquerque's International District and on the campus of the University of New Mexico, where Moneka Stevens, a member of the All-African People's Revolutionary Party, told the Daily Lobo that "they had a different bar for this child's life."
"They took his body from the home and they left it outside--his burnt body--and the community had to demand and beg to have the dignity to cover him up," she added.
"When the family told [officers] repeatedly there was a child in the house, they did not care. You know why? Because he's African. They do not care for our lives...They did not care for that home. They use war weapons in our communities that created a fire that burned a child alive."
\u201cIf you knew the culture of the APD like we do, you would know that this was not an "accident" the same way a lightning strike is an "accident", but rather this is the result of many systems of oppression at play, from ghettoization of communities to the culture of the police.\u201d— Alex Washburne (@Alex Washburne) 1657584536
APD has been slow to comply with court-ordered reforms after a U.S. Justice Department investigation completed in 2014 found that it engaged in "a pattern or practice of use of excessive force" after 20 people were killed by officers in a four-year period.
In contrast, APD officers have encouraged right-wing militias, including some whom officers described as "heavily armed friendlies" who harassed racial justice protesters in the wake of the 2020 police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
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Demonstrator Shot in New Mexico as Right-Wing Militia Attacks Protest Over Monument to Brutal Conquistador
"These extremists cannot be allowed to silence peaceful protests or inflict violence."
Jun 16, 2020
Members of a far right militia group were arrested Monday evening in Albuquerque after a standoff at a statue of a notoriously brutal conquistador in the New Mexico city turned violent with a demonstrator advocating for the removal of the monument shot and sent to the hospital.
"The shooting tonight was a tragic, outrageous, and unacceptable act of violence and it has no place in our city," tweeted Mayor Tim Keller shortly after the incident.
\u201cThe shooting tonight was a tragic, outrageous and unacceptable act of violence and it has no place in our city. Our diverse community will not be deterred by acts meant to divide or silence us.\u201d— Mayor Tim Keller (@Mayor Tim Keller) 1592281481
The dispute centered on a monument to conquistador Juan de Onate, whose brutality toward the area's Indigenous population in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, particularly the Acoma people, was extreme even for its time.
"If you look at it logically, he was no one to celebrate," Santa Fe activist Elena Ortiz told the Albuquerque Journal.
As the New York Timesdetailed:
Onate's period as governor was marked by a violent repression considered severe even by the standards of his time. He killed 800 Indigenous people in Acoma Pueblo and ordered his men to cut off the foot of at least 24 male captives. Spanish authorities convicted him on charges of excessive violence and cruelty, permanently exiling him from New Mexico.
"Melt them down and recast them as commemorative pieces," Acoma artist Maurus Chino told the Times of monuments to the conquistador.
A statue of Onate in Albuquerque, named "La Jornada," was the focal point of Monday's protest. As dusk fell, demonstrators began attempting to pull the monument down from its pedestal on the Albuquerque Museum grounds.
At that point, members of the New Mexico Civil Guard militia group moved in, attacking the protesters. Within minutes, gunshots rang out and one man had been shot.
\u201cVery tense scene in Albuquerque right now. Shots fired, a guy on the ground. Militia members still w/ rifles\u201d— Simon Romero (@Simon Romero) 1592273237
The victim was transported to a hospital where he was listed as in critical condition. A number of militia members were arrested, including a man in a blue shirt identified as the shooter who yelled that his father was a sheriff.
\u201cThe shooter\u2019s name is Steven Baca. He\u2019s the son of a former sheriff and once ran for ABQ city council. https://t.co/Wh91U3tcZb\u201d— Nick Estes (@Nick Estes) 1592273792
The relative ease and peacefulness with which the heavily armed white militia members were gently arrested was not lost on critics who noted the disconnect between the treatment of the far-right extremists who had just shot a man and the killings of unarmed black men by police caught on camera in recent years.
\u201cOne of these New Mexico right-wing militia members just shot a person. \n\nNotice how calmly they\u2019re all being detained. \n\nDon\u2019t tell me George Floyd and Rayshard Brooks and Eric Garner\u2014who did not harm anybody\u2014couldn\u2019t be treated differently.\u201d— Juli\u00e1n Castro (@Juli\u00e1n Castro) 1592276313
The right wing militia movement's involvement in the protests is a cause for concern in New Mexico, tweeted Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.).
"This is not the first report of heavily armed civilian militias appearing at protests around New Mexico in recent weeks," said Heinrich. "These extremists cannot be allowed to silence peaceful protests or inflict violence."
The right-wing militia's attempts failed to keep the Onate monument in place Monday. Hours after the shooting, Keller announced he was having the statue removed; the city took the statue down early Tuesday.
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Boondoggle, Inc: Making Sense of the $1.25 Trillion National Security State Budget
A dollar-by-dollar tour of the national security state
May 07, 2019
In its latest budget request, the Trump administration is asking for a near-record $750 billion for the Pentagon and related defense activities, an astonishing figure by any measure. If passed by Congress, it will, in fact, be one of the largest military budgets in American history, topping peak levels reached during the Korean and Vietnam Wars. And keep one thing in mind: that $750 billion represents only part of the actual annual cost of our national security state.
There are at least 10 separate pots of money dedicated to fighting wars, preparing for yet more wars, and dealing with the consequences of wars already fought. So the next time a president, a general, a secretary of defense, or a hawkish member of Congress insists that the U.S. military is woefully underfunded, think twice. A careful look at U.S. defense expenditures offers a healthy corrective to such wildly inaccurate claims.
Now, let's take a brief dollar-by-dollar tour of the U.S. national security state of 2019, tallying the sums up as we go, and see just where we finally land (or perhaps the word should be "soar"), financially speaking.
The Pentagon's "Base" Budget: The Pentagon's regular, or "base," budget is slated to be $544.5 billion in Fiscal Year 2020, a healthy sum but only a modest down payment on total military spending.
As you might imagine, that base budget provides basic operating funds for the Department of Defense, much of which will actually be squandered on preparations for ongoing wars never authorized by Congress, overpriced weapons systems that aren't actually needed, or outright waste, an expansive category that includes everything from cost overruns to unnecessary bureaucracy. That $544.5 billion is the amount publicly reported by the Pentagon for its essential expenses and includes as well $9.6 billion in mandatory spending that goes toward items like military retirement.
Among those basic expenses, let's start with waste, a category even the biggest boosters of Pentagon spending can't defend. The Pentagon's own Defense Business Board found that cutting unnecessary overhead, including a bloated bureaucracy and a startlingly large shadow workforce of private contractors, would save $125 billion over five years. Perhaps you won't be surprised to learn that the board's proposal has done little to quiet calls for more money. Instead, from the highest reaches of the Pentagon (and the president himself) came a proposal to create a Space Force, a sixth military service that's all but guaranteed to further bloat its bureaucracy and duplicate work already being done by the other services. Even Pentagon planners estimate that the future Space Force will cost $13 billion over the next five years (and that's undoubtedly a low-ball figure).
In addition, the Defense Department employs an army of private contractors -- more than 600,000 of them -- many doing jobs that could be done far more cheaply by civilian government employees. Cutting the private contractor work force by 15% to a mere half-million people would promptly save more than $20 billion per year. And don't forget the cost overruns on major weapons programs like the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent -- the Pentagon's unwieldy name for the Air Force's new intercontinental ballistic missile -- and routine overpayments for even minor spare parts (like $8,000 for a helicopter gear worth less than $500, a markup of more than 1,500%).
Then there are the overpriced weapons systems the military can't even afford to operate like the $13-billion aircraft carrier, 200 nuclear bombers at $564 million a pop, and the F-35 combat aircraft, the most expensive weapons system in history, at a price tag of at least $1.4 trillion over the lifetime of the program. The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) has found -- and the Government Accountability Office recently substantiated -- that, despite years of work and staggering costs, the F-35 may never perform as advertised.
And don't forget the Pentagon's recent push for long-range strike weapons and new reconnaissance systems designed for future wars with a nuclear-armed Russia or China, the kind of conflicts that could easily escalate into World War III, where such weaponry would be beside the point. Imagine if any of that money were devoted to figuring out how to prevent such conflicts, rather than hatching yet more schemes for how to fight them.
Base Budget total: $554.1 billion
The War Budget: As if its regular budget weren't enough, the Pentagon also maintains its very own slush fund, formally known as the Overseas Contingency Operations account, or OCO. In theory, the fund is meant to pay for the war on terror -- that is, the U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Syria, and elsewhere across the Middle East and Africa. In practice, it does that and so much more.
After a fight over shutting down the government led to the formation of a bipartisan commission on deficit reduction -- known as Simpson-Bowles after its co-chairs, former Clinton Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles and former Republican Senator Alan Simpson -- Congress passed the Budget Control Act of 2011. It officially put caps on both military and domestic spending that were supposed to save a total of $2 trillion over 10 years. Half of that figure was to come from the Pentagon, as well as from nuclear weapons spending at the Department of Energy. As it happened, though, there was a huge loophole: that war budget was exempt from the caps. The Pentagon promptly began to put tens of billions of dollars into it for pet projects that had nothing whatsoever to do with current wars (and the process has never stopped). The level of abuse of this fund remained largely secret for years, with the Pentagon admitting only in 2016 that just half of the money in the OCO went to actual wars, prompting critics and numerous members of Congress -- including then-Congressman Mick Mulvaney, now President Trump's latest chief of staff -- to dub it a "slush fund."
This year's budget proposal supersizes the slush in that fund to a figure that would likely be considered absurd if it weren't part of the Pentagon budget. Of the nearly $174 billion proposed for the war budget and "emergency" funding, only a little more than $25 billion is meant to directly pay for the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. The rest will be set aside for what's termed "enduring" activities that would continue even if those wars ended, or to pay for routine Pentagon activities that couldn't be funded within the constraints of the budget caps. The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives is expected to work to alter this arrangement. Even if the House leadership were to have its way, however, most of its reductions in the war budget would be offset by lifting caps on the regular Pentagon budget by corresponding amounts. (It's worth noting that President Trump's budget calls for someday eliminating the slush fund.)
The 2020 OCO also includes $9.2 billion in "emergency" spending for building Trump's beloved wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, among other things.Talk about a slush fund! There is no emergency, of course. The executive branch is just seizing taxpayer dollars that Congress refused to provide. Even supporters of the president's wall should be troubled by this money grab. As 36 former Republican members of Congress recently argued, "What powers are ceded to a president whose policies you support may also be used by presidents whose policies you abhor." Of all of Trump's "security"-related proposals, this is undoubtedly the most likely to be eliminated, or at least scaled back, given the congressional Democrats against it.
War Budget total: $173.8 billion
Running tally: $727.9 billion
The Department of Energy/Nuclear Budget: It may surprise you to know that work on the deadliest weapons in the U.S. arsenal, nuclear warheads, is housed in the Department of Energy (DOE), not the Pentagon. The DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration runs a nationwide research, development, and production network for nuclear warheads and naval nuclear reactors that stretches from Livermore, California, to Albuquerque and Los Alamos, New Mexico, to Kansas City, Missouri, to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to Savannah River, South Carolina. Its laboratories also have a long history of program mismanagement, with some projects coming in at nearly eight times the initial estimates.
Nuclear Budget total: $24.8 billion
Running tally: $752.7 billion
"Defense Related Activities": This category covers the $9 billion that annually goes to agencies other than the Pentagon, the bulk of it to the FBI for homeland security-related activities.
Defense Related Activities total: $9 billion
Running tally: $761.7 billion
The five categories outlined above make up the budget of what's officially known as "national defense." Under the Budget Control Act, this spending should have been capped at $630 billion. The $761.7 billion proposed for the 2020 budget is, however, only the beginning of the story.
The Veterans Affairs Budget: The wars of this century have created a new generation of veterans. In all, over 2.7 million U.S. military personnel have cycled through the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001. Many of them remain in need of substantial support to deal with the physical and mental wounds of war. As a result, the budget for the Department of Veterans Affairs has gone through the roof, more than tripling in this century to a proposed $216 billion. And this massive figure may not even prove enough to provide the necessary services.
More than 6,900 U.S. military personnel have died in Washington's post-9/11 wars, with more than 30,000 wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan alone. These casualties are, however, just the tip of the iceberg. Hundreds of thousands of returning troops suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), illnesses created by exposure to toxic burn pits, or traumatic brain injuries. The U.S. government is committed to providing care for these veterans for the rest of their lives. An analysis by the Costs of War Project at Brown University has determined that obligations to veterans of the Iraq and Afghan wars alone will total more than $1 trillion in the years to come. This cost of war is rarely considered when leaders in Washington decide to send U.S. troops into combat.
Veterans Affairs total: $216 billion
Running tally: $977.7 billion
The Homeland Security Budget: The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is a mega-agency created after the 9/11 attacks. At the time, it swallowed 22 then-existing government organizations, creating a massive department that currently has nearly a quarter of a million employees. Agencies that are now part of DHS include the Coast Guard, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Citizenship and Immigration Services, the Secret Service, the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office, and the Office of Intelligence and Analysis.
While some of DHS's activities -- such as airport security and defense against the smuggling of a nuclear weapon or "dirty bomb" into our midst -- have a clear security rationale, many others do not. ICE -- America's deportation force -- has done far more to cause suffering among innocent people than to thwart criminals or terrorists. Other questionable DHS activities include grants to local law enforcement agencies to help them buy military-grade equipment.
Homeland Security total: $69.2 billion
Running tally: $1.0469 trillion
The International Affairs Budget: This includes the budgets of the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Diplomacy is one of the most effective ways to make the United States and the world more secure, but it has been under assault in the Trump years. The Fiscal Year 2020 budget calls for a one-third cut in international affairs spending, leaving it at about one-fifteenth of the amount allocated for the Pentagon and related agencies grouped under the category of "national defense." And that doesn't even account for the fact that more than 10% of the international affairs budget supports military aid efforts, most notably the $5.4 billion Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program. The bulk of FMF goes to Israel and Egypt, but in all over a dozen countries receive funding under it, including Jordan, Lebanon, Djibouti, Tunisia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Georgia, the Philippines, and Vietnam.
International Affairs total: $51 billion
Running tally: $1.0979 trillion
The Intelligence Budget: The United States has 17 separate intelligence agencies. In addition to the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis and the FBI, mentioned above, they are the CIA; the National Security Agency; the Defense Intelligence Agency; the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research; the Drug Enforcement Agency's Office of National Security Intelligence; the Treasury Department's Office of Intelligence and Analysis; the Department of Energy's Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence; the National Reconnaissance Office; the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency; Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance; the Army's Intelligence and Security Command; the Office of Naval Intelligence; Marine Corps Intelligence; and Coast Guard Intelligence. And then there's that 17th one, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, set up to coordinate the activities of the other 16.
We know remarkably little about the nature of the nation's intelligence spending, other than its supposed total, released in a report every year. By now, it's more than $80 billion. The bulk of this funding, including for the CIA and NSA, is believed to be hidden under obscure line items in the Pentagon budget. Since intelligence spending is not a separate funding stream, it's not counted in our tally below (though, for all we know, some of it should be).
Intelligence Budget total: $80 billion
Running tally (still): $1.0979 trillion
Defense Share of Interest on the National Debt: The interest on the national debt is well on its way to becoming one of the most expensive items in the federal budget. Within a decade, it is projected to exceed the Pentagon's regular budget in size. For now, of the more than $500 billion in interest taxpayers fork over to service the government's debt each year, about $156 billion can be attributed to Pentagon spending.
Defense Share of National Debt total: $156.3 billion
Final tally: $1.2542 trillion
So, our final annual tally for war, preparations for war, and the impact of war comes to more than $1.25 trillion -- more than double the Pentagon's base budget. If the average taxpayer were aware that this amount was being spent in the name of national defense -- with much of it wasted, misguided, or simply counterproductive -- it might be far harder for the national security state to consume ever-growing sums with minimal public pushback. For now, however, the gravy train is running full speed ahead and its main beneficiaries -- Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and their cohorts -- are laughing all the way to the bank.
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